How much do precipitation extremes change in a warming climate?

In this work, we review recent important advances in our understanding of the response of precipitation extremes to warming from theory and from idealized cloud-resolving simulations. A theoretical scaling for precipitation extremes has been proposed and refined in the past decades, allowing to address separately the contributions from the thermodynamics, the dynamics and the microphysics. Theoretical constraints, as well as remaining uncertainties, associated with each of these three contributions to precipitation extremes, will be discussed. Notably, although to leading order precipitation extremes seem to follow the thermodynamic theoretical expectation in idealized simulations, considerable uncertainty remains regarding the response of the dynamics and of the microphysics to warming, and considerable departure from this theoretical expectation is found in observations and in more realistic simulations. We also emphasize key outstanding questions, in particular the response of mesoscale convective organization to warming. Observations suggest that extreme rainfall often comes from organized system in very moist environments. Improved understanding of the physical processes behind convective organization is needed in order to achieve accurate extreme rainfall prediction in our current, and in a warming climate.

Download Full-text

The Dependence of Daily and Hourly Precipitation Extremes on Temperature and Atmospheric Humidity over China

Journal of Climate ◽

10.1175/jcli-d-18-0050.1 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 31 (21) ◽

pp. 8931-8944 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Hong Wang ◽

Fubao Sun ◽

Wenbin Liu

Keyword(s):

Vapor Pressure ◽

Saturated Vapor Pressure ◽

Saturated Vapor ◽

Precipitation Extremes ◽

Atmospheric Humidity ◽

Point Temperature ◽

Hourly Precipitation ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Daily Data ◽

Hourly Data

Precipitation extremes are expected to increase by 7% per degree of warming according to the Clausius–Clapeyron (CC) relation. However, this scaling behavior is inappropriate for high temperatures and short-duration precipitation extremes. Here, daily data from 702 stations during 1951–2014 and hourly data from 8 stations during 2000–15 are used to examine and explain this behavior in China. Both daily and hourly precipitation extremes exhibit an increase in temperature dependency at lower temperatures. The CC scaling transitions from positive to negative rates with temperatures greater than 25°C. Unlike the increase in daily data, which is similar to single-CC (1CC) scaling, the increase in hourly data resembles super-CC (2CC) scaling for temperatures greater than 13°C. Results show that the precipitation extremes are controlled by water vapor for a given temperature. At lower temperatures, precipitation extremes exhibit a positive linear dependence on daily actual vapor pressure whose value is almost equal to the saturated vapor pressure at a given temperature. At higher temperatures, actual vapor pressure has difficulty maintaining a consistent increasing rate because of the exponential increasing of the saturated vapor pressure. Higher temperatures result in larger vapor pressure deficits, which lead to sharp decreases in precipitation extremes. Similar scaling behaviors are obtained in 10 river basins over China, where the breaking point temperature increases from 17°C along the northwest inland area to 25°C along the southeast coast. These behaviors demonstrate that precipitation extremes are firmly linked to temperature when there is sufficient moisture at lower temperatures and limited by insufficient moisture at higher temperatures. Overall, precipitation extreme events require more attention in a warming climate.

Download Full-text

An extremeness threshold determines the regional response of floods to changes in rainfall extremes

Communications Earth & Environment ◽

10.1038/s43247-021-00248-x ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Manuela I. Brunner ◽

Daniel L. Swain ◽

Raul R. Wood ◽

Florian Willkofer ◽

James M. Done ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Surface ◽

Climate Model ◽

Precipitation Extremes ◽

Precipitation Frequency ◽

Climate Conditions ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Main River ◽

Flood Magnitude ◽

The Relationship ◽

Model Chain

AbstractPrecipitation extremes will increase in a warming climate, but the response of flood magnitudes to heavier precipitation events is less clear. Historically, there is little evidence for systematic increases in flood magnitude despite observed increases in precipitation extremes. Here we investigate how flood magnitudes change in response to warming, using a large initial-condition ensemble of simulations with a single climate model, coupled to a hydrological model. The model chain was applied to historical (1961–2000) and warmer future (2060–2099) climate conditions for 78 watersheds in hydrological Bavaria, a region comprising the headwater catchments of the Inn, Danube and Main River, thus representing an area of expressed hydrological heterogeneity. For the majority of the catchments, we identify a ‘return interval threshold’ in the relationship between precipitation and flood increases: at return intervals above this threshold, further increases in extreme precipitation frequency and magnitude clearly yield increased flood magnitudes; below the threshold, flood magnitude is modulated by land surface processes. We suggest that this threshold behaviour can reconcile climatological and hydrological perspectives on changing flood risk in a warming climate.

Download Full-text

Understanding the sensitivity of hourly precipitation extremes to the warming climate over Eastern China

Environmental Research Communications ◽

10.1088/2515-7620/ac17e1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Danqing Huang ◽

Jian Zhu ◽

Xiucheng Xiao ◽

Jing Cheng ◽

Yuxuan Ding ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Eastern China ◽

Precipitation Extremes ◽

Hourly Precipitation ◽

Warming Climate

Download Full-text

How does convective self-aggregation affect precipitation extremes?

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5216 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Nicolas Da Silva ◽

Sara Shamekh ◽

Caroline Muller ◽

Benjamin Fildier

Keyword(s):

Extreme Rainfall ◽

Precipitation Extremes ◽

Tropical Precipitation ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Free Region ◽

Depth Analysis ◽

The Tropics ◽

The Impact ◽

Self Aggregation ◽

Convective Organization

Convective organisation has been associated with extreme precipitation in the tropics. Here we investigate the impact of convective self-aggregation on extreme rainfall rates. We find that convective self-aggregation significantly increases precipitation extremes, for 3-hourly accumulations but also for instantaneous rates (+ 30 %). We show that this latter enhanced instantaneous precipitation is mainly due to the local increase in relative humidity which drives larger accretion efficiency and lower re-evaporation and thus a higher precipitation efficiency.An in-depth analysis based on an adapted scaling of precipitation extremes, reveals that the dynamic contribution decreases (- 25 %) while the thermodynamic is slightly enhanced (+ 5 %) with convective aggregation, leading to lower condensation rates (- 20 %). When the atmosphere is more organized into a moist convecting region, and a dry convection-free region, deep convective updrafts are surrounded by a warmer environment which reduces convective instability and thus the dynamic contribution. The moister boundary-layer explains the positive thermodynamic contribution. The microphysic contribution is increased by + 50 % with aggregation. The latter is partly due to reduced evaporation of rain falling through a moister near-cloud environment (+ 30 %), but also to the associated larger accretion efficiency (+ 20 %).Thus, the change of convective organization regimes in a warming climate could lead to a much more different evolution of tropical precipitation extremes than expected from thermodynamical considerations. Improved fundamental understanding of convective organization and its sensitivity to warming, as well as its impact on precipitation extremes, is hence crucial to achieve accurate rainfall projections in a warming climate.

Download Full-text

Higher temperatures enhance spatio-temporal rainfall concentration

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-4350 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Dagang Wang ◽

Kaihao Long

Keyword(s):

Precipitation Extremes ◽

Effect Of Temperature ◽

Spatial Concentration ◽

Rainfall Events ◽

Theoretical Support ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Temporal And Spatial ◽

Spatio Temporal ◽

Rain Events ◽

Precipitation Events

Warming climate has significantly influenced the environment on the earth, which attracts wide attention in society. Previous studies show that precipitation extremes increase with warmer temperature. This phenomenon has been observed in the regions with various climates, with the theoretical support of the Clausius-Clapeyron relation. However, the effect of temperature on the spatio-temporal characteristics of precipitation extremes are less studied. In this study, we propose a new index to represent the temporal and spatial concentration of rainfall events, and study how temperature affect the rainfall concentration. It is found that precipitation events tend to have higher temporal and spatial concentration at higher temperatures, and rain events with shorter duration is more likely to be concentrated than those with longer duration in both time and space. The results indicate that rain events would be concentrated over smaller regions and during shorter periods under warming climate in the future, which leads to flood and drought occurring simultaneously.

Download Full-text

Modelling ecosystem adaptation and dangerous rates of global warming

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20180113 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 221-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Rebecca Millington ◽

Peter M. Cox ◽

Jonathan R. Moore ◽

Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Warming ◽

Diffusion Rate ◽

Individual Species ◽

Genetic Evolution ◽

Rates Of Change ◽

Rapid Climate Change ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Intraspecies Competition ◽

High Trait

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).

Download Full-text